


Break My Step & Relent

by seadeepy



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Era, Cave-In, Introspection, M/M, Magic Revealed, POV Arthur, Pre-Relationship, it's a bottle episode!, this is the medieval equivalent of being trapped in an elevator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:20:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28148247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seadeepy/pseuds/seadeepy
Summary: Merlin saves them both as the walls of Camelot are crumbling, but now he and Arthur are trapped and his secret is out in the open. Arthur struggles with the betrayal and his own anger, questioning how this affects his feelings for Merlin.OR: I stick the boys in a very small space to force them to talk about their problems.
Relationships: Merlin/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin)
Comments: 20
Kudos: 248





	Break My Step & Relent

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [oh darling, darling](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26766331) by [Le_Tournesol](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Le_Tournesol/pseuds/Le_Tournesol). 



> I read Sunny's bit for the Whumptober prompt "caged/buried alive/collapsed building" and could not stop imagining what might have happened after it! Except I write at the pace of an extremely emotional snail, so it took me two months to finish this. Special thanks to Sunny for letting me add onto [her story](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26766331/chapters/65425825) \-- it provides context for how the characters found themselves in this position, though I don't think it's necessary to understand what's going on here.
> 
> I imagine this is set sometime in late season 3, where Uther's still king and Morgana's evil but nobody except Merlin knows it. I'd love for Arthur to be more immediately understanding/forgiving, but he's still young and hasn't yet grown into the person he can become.
> 
> Title is from "I Will Wait" by Mumford & Sons, another fantastic Merthur song. I highly doubt this will be the last story I title using [its lyrics](https://genius.com/Mumford-and-sons-i-will-wait-lyrics).

There is silence after that for a while. Merlin’s words linger between them, as heavy and suffocating as the air that scratches the back of Arthur’s throat with every breath he takes.

The only source of light is a miniature white flame suspended inches below the tunnel ceiling, a scintillating point brighter and steadier than any candle. It is a visible reminder of everything Arthur is trying not to let destroy him. His chest aches like he’s been struck by the falling debris, like there is a five-ton stone crushing his lungs beneath its weight.

But it cannot be the cave-in that makes Arthur feel like this, because aside from a few scrapes and bruises, he is unharmed. Trapped under the rubble, to be sure, but he isn’t ground to a pulp. He’d expected to be, when he saw the walls around them tear and crumple like paper. No, Arthur is alive because Merlin saved them both. With magic. It’s that tiny detail that is breaking Arthur apart, here in the darkness under what’s left of Camelot.

Arthur itches to get away from Merlin, to escape the wide-eyed gaze that searches his face for— Arthur doesn’t know what, he thought he knew Merlin and clearly he doesn’t. Clearly he knows nothing about Merlin at all. But Arthur can’t put any space between them, can’t move more than a few feet. He has to settle for turning his head and closing his eyes, wishing with every bruised inch of him they were somewhere else — a forest, maybe, verdant and open — so he could command Merlin to leave him. Not that Merlin would listen, probably. He never has.

There are crunching, scrabbling noises to Arthur’s left. He sighs, suspecting that the idiot is trying to dig their way out of here. Cracking open his his eyes, Arthur sees that he at least was still able to predict that much: Merlin is pawing futile at a nearby crevice, sending gravel sliding and dust billowing until he coughs himself senseless.

Arthur presses himself closer to the wall, eyes watering. Closing them didn’t matter, anyway — Merlin’s presence is tangible even without sight. Arthur thinks he would know the shape and warmth of him if it were the entire castle trapped in here with them. Thinks he could reach out a hand and find Merlin in the crowd, fingertips seeking skin. Arthur would be guided to Merlin the same way he navigates by the north star, burning constant and true among a hundred other constellations.

It’s a horrible thought, to realize Merlin still feels so familiar, even after such a shattering revelation. Nausea rolls in Arthur’s stomach, and he opens his mouth to silently gasp for air.

“Arthur? Are you all right?” Merlin asks.

Not silently enough, apparently.

They’re the same words again, the first ones Merlin spoke after the dust settled. Merlin said he stayed for Arthur, said he wants to be Arthur’s servant — chooses to be, when he has the power to shape the very earth around them. Merlin hadn’t said he couldn’t blow them out of here, only that he was concerned about the collateral damage. Attempting to reconcile that quiet confidence with his clumsy, incompetent manservant makes Arthur’s mind do flips just like his stomach. Nothing is certain anymore, not even the ground below Arthur’s feet.

“You said I’m to be a great king,” Arthur says aloud, almost unwillingly. The words feel like they’ve been scraped out of his throat on the serrated edge of a knife. “Not just now. You’ve said it before. But you... you’ve lied to me all this time. How can I trust anything you say?”

Arthur wants to continue, but he bites down on the questions that press against his tongue — the taste of them is sharp as blood, but letting them out would be even worse. It would show vulnerability, and Arthur’s been taught that’s the one thing a prince must never do.

Still, he wonders with an intensity that is almost painful: the way he feels about Merlin, is that enchantment? Has Merlin been weaving them together with dark magic for years now? That thrill of excitement that sparked in Arthur the first time they spoke, when Merlin took a swing at him and Arthur threw him in the dungeons. When Arthur couldn’t stop thinking about him afterward. Was any of it real?

The only part of it he voices is, “I thought I knew you.” 

But privately, he thinks: _I thought I loved you._

Arthur hates that he can still see how he’s hurt Merlin. How Merlin tries to hide it as he always has, hunching his shoulders and twisting away. Merlin’s silent for a few moments, perhaps choosing his words.

“I’m still the same person,” Merlin says, but when he looks back at Arthur there are shadowed depths to his gaze that make him a stranger.

Arthur snorts. “Merlin,” he begins, and oh, even that hurts, the familiar way his mouth shapes the word. “You struggle to walk in a straight line sometimes, but you just...”

He trails off, because he’s not sure he can describe what it is that Merlin just did.

“Saved your life? Yeah. It’s not the first time, either.”

Merlin sounds his usual mix of sullen and spunky, but gods — is there anything he can say that Arthur won’t dissect to pieces now? Because Merlin’s comments about protecting him are starting to sound more plausible, and it’s a disturbing idea.

Arthur has always thought Merlin was easy to read, with his enormous blue eyes and mobile expressions, wearing his heart on his shabby jacket sleeve. But seeing him now, seeing how fast he dons a cheerful façade and relapses into mockery, Arthur realizes that Merlin is a master of deflection. Never an outright lie, but how many times has Merlin brushed away Arthur’s questions with a quick joke or a goading insult? How many times has Arthur been led, as if by bit and bridle, been distracted or redirected? How many times was he too trusting, too blinded by his own feelings to ever realize their banter might be hiding something more dangerous?

“Why?” Arthur says. The single word has a hundred meanings, but he can’t sift through the storm inside him long enough to be any more specific.

“You already asked me that,” Merlin points out.

“Humor me,” Arthur snaps, and his heart drops out of his chest when Merlin flinches. That is not the Merlin he knows. That is the Merlin that came to Camelot with a secret that would have him burned alive.

“I meant what I told you. I use it for you, Arthur. Only for you.”

Arthur says nothing to that, because what is there to say?

* * *

After another few minutes of strained stillness, Merlin returns to digging.

“Stop that,” Arthur says, irritated. “You’ll bring the whole thing down on us.”

Merlin glances over his shoulder. “Do you have a better idea, Sire?” The honorific sounds as sarcastic as it ever has.

“Someone will be looking for us,” Arthur says with more confidence than he feels. “We just have to stay alive until they can get us out.”

Merlin squints at the ceiling, the same sadness as before playing around the edges of his expression. “The whole castle collapsed. I don’t know if there’s anyone to—”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Arthur snaps. It comes out more harshly than he meant it to.

Unexpectedly, Merlin wilts instead of rising to the bait.

“There must have been other pockets like this one,” Arthur insists, doggedly ignoring the minor detail that Merlin created this one with previously unrevealed sorcery, and hopefully the chances of that happening among the rest of the court are slim. “There will be other survivors.”

“Yes, Sire,” Merlin mutters.

Silence lurks in the collapsed tunnel. They can hardly turn away from each other, much less withdraw and find their own space. Arthur is breathing in the same air that spills from Merlin’s lips, as Merlin is from Arthur’s, mixing and mingling. Arthur can smell the scent of sweat and blood, scents he associates with a battlefield. But here they are stifled, stale, thick with grime and panic.

A thought occurs: if Merlin fears for his life, how much of that terror is of the cave-in, and how much is of Arthur himself?

“When we get out of here,” Arthur says, “what will you do?”

Merlin’s shoulders hunch again. “That depends on you.”

Bitterness needles at Arthur, challenges him to say, “If you’re so powerful, what’s to stop you from— from zapping me when I try to arrest you?”

“You’re going to arrest me?” Merlin asks. Arthur could swear his giant ears droop like a puppy’s.

That wasn’t what Arthur meant at all. “I don’t understand,” he says, frustrated.

“A pretty normal day for you, then—”

“Merlin!” A flash of relief at their usual banter, followed quickly by gnawing uncertainty. “My father has outlawed magic in Camelot.”

“I’d noticed,” says Merlin dryly.

“I’m the prince,” Arthur says. He means to declare it, to reassure himself and to reassert some control over the situation. Instead it comes out more like a plea, or an excuse. Almost, gods forbid, like an apology. “What else could I possibly do?”

“This is why I didn’t tell you.” Merlin sounds resigned, subdued. “I never wanted to put you in this position.”

Arthur’s stomach twists like before, and while most of him is mired in a nauseating swirl of betrayal and anger, there is also a swelling of irrepressible fondness. He says, “That’s what worried you?”

They stare at each other, illuminated by Merlin’s magical flame. Merlin’s eyes appear translucent under its flat white glare, like sapphires, or a tranquil lake with hidden depths. His lips are parted as his gaze traces Arthur’s features, a sharp crease between his dark eyebrows. Arthur must resist the sudden and inexplicable urge to reach out across the infinitesimal distance that separates them and touch him. Just to see if he is real, if his bony shoulders and knobbly elbows feel the same as ever.

Then Merlin looks away, and the moment is lost. The smothering sensation in Arthur’s chest returns.

* * *

“Tell me,” Arthur commands, after they’ve been lying there for countless more minutes. It has occurred to him that they might run out of air, slump gradually into a hazy sleep from which they’ll never wake. “Those times when I couldn’t find you. When Gaius said you were in the tavern, or gathering herbs.”

Merlin doesn’t reply at first, and Arthur half-sits, fearing for one heart-pounding second he’s already lost consciousness. But no — Merlin is watching him, hesitant and wary.

“What were you actually doing?” Arthur asks. “I assume those were lies as well.”

Merlin’s lips tighten, but he doesn’t deny it. “Like I said. Saving your royal arse.”

“What could _you_ have possibly done to save _me_?” Arthur asks, though he’s starting to glimpse the edges of the answer to that, and it frightens him.

Merlin contemplates the ceiling. “Let’s see,” he says slowly. “Do you remember right after Morgana came back? When your f—” he hesitates, almost imperceptibly, “—when Cenred’s army attacked.”

Arthur remembers. He would never admit it, but he remembers because he spent what little free time he had over those few days wandering the castle, feeling incomplete. Unsettled by clammy concern for his father, half-turning every few steps to lob a comment at a person who wasn’t there. Who wasn’t a step behind Arthur where he belonged, tripping over his own feet and offering his maddeningly helpful counsel, or his supremely irritating brand of comfort.

“I came back and your chambers were a mess,” Merlin offers, interpreting Arthur’s silence as an answer in the negative. Like he is really that disposable to Arthur. Like Arthur’s bad temper when Merlin returned wasn’t half the result of concern, a skein of tangled tension that came unraveled at the sight of Merlin’s ridiculous face.

“You threw a cup at me,” Merlin says, helpful as always. “And also a platter, and—”

“Get on with it,” Arthur says sourly, disconcerted to consider the many, many times he’s abused Merlin in his employ when all along Merlin apparently had the power to squash him like a bug.

In a voice that is quiet but unequivocal, Merlin says, “The king had been enchanted. I broke the enchantment, after— after the people who were responsible had left me for dead.”

Arthur whips around to stare at Merlin in disbelief, dislodging a small rockslide that fills the small space with dust and clatter. Arthur coughs and wheezes until his ribs are sore, somehow vindicated to see Merlin doing the same.

 _Even an all-powerful sorcerer needs to breathe like the rest of us,_ he thinks with something akin to satisfaction, before the dissonance of thinking such a thing about Merlin melts his brain like candle wax.

“What,” Arthur says, then flounders as he fails to find the rest of his sentence.

Merlin just looks at him.

“Don’t exaggerate,” Arthur says with the faintest sneer, reaching for a gibe to conceal the high-pitched distress beginning to buzz beneath his skin. Arthur had asked Merlin where he’d been, and Merlin had said... had said that he _was_ dying.

“They bound me in magical chains and left me for the serkets,” Merlin says flatly. He twines his fingers together, but not before Arthur sees they are shaking. “But I, um, got free. And came back in time to get that lecture from you. Lucky me.” He offers Arthur a crooked smile, but Arthur can see the strain at the corners of his eyes.

“Who is they?” Arthur says. “And how the hell did you get out of that?”

It’s even more ridiculous now that he knows about the magic, but Arthur’s heart stutters with distress. Even with Merlin here in front of him this second, with literally only a scratch on him, Arthur’s head fills with the image of his gawky idiot manservant shivering on the forest floor, alone in the night but for the hissing, rattling monsters that scuttle closer. And despite it all, Arthur clenches his fists, biting back a dark surge of protective fury. Not at Merlin, but for him.

“I will tell you everything, I promise,” Merlin says, when Arthur’s nearly forgotten the question. “Eventually. But there are some secrets that...” Merlin swallows. “They’re not mine to tell, and the consequences...”

Arthur doesn’t respond for a moment. He’s not good with feelings at the best of times, and the maelstrom of conflicting emotion seething in this tiny space is making his head spin. He can’t figure out if he’s more angry at Merlin for the lies, or himself for being so oblivious to this major detail about his closest friend. If he’s more afraid of what this implies about the improbable situations he’s survived over the years, or of how this might change things between them.

Arthur can’t decide if he hates Merlin now, or if he still, despite everything — despite the revelation that Merlin possesses a power that Arthur’s been taught corrupts the soul completely — feels the same way he always has.

“I understand,” Arthur says stiffly, more to stop that line of thought than to provide any relief to Merlin, who still looks unbelievably twitchy despite the defiant set to his jaw.

Merlin relaxes slightly anyway, and Arthur feels a flicker of guilt that he smacks down instantly. How can he still be worried what Merlin thinks of him? It’s just like Merlin, really, to somehow appear agelessly wise and hilariously nonthreatening at the same time — Arthur has wondered about that many times before, in Merlin’s moments of terrifying loyalty and unfathomable faith, and here at last is the explanation. The idea of Merlin carrying around heaps of secrets actually makes more sense than it ought to, because Merlin has always been a contradiction, a puzzle Arthur couldn’t solve.

It’s what drew him back to Merlin that sunny day in the marketplace, when they tangled for a second time. Exhilaration brightening his irritation at being openly mocked — a confused fluttering that could only be called delight, as he challenged the scrawny peasant who showed up and broke every barrier Arthur’s lived behind his whole life. The incredibly disrespectful, incredibly bold blue-eyed boy who has talked to Arthur in ways nobody else has ever dared to, who has cared for him in ways nobody else bothered to, who has touched him in ways Arthur didn’t even know he yearned for. Unflinching and unshakeable, and the only person who has ever seen him as a person first and a prince second.

“So you won’t tell me about the serkets,” Arthur says, shifting to sit cross-legged with his back against the tunnel wall.

Merlin perks up and rearranges himself to mirror Arthur’s position, possibly responding to Arthur’s tone, which has softened somewhat. Arthur is trying here, and he hopes Merlin understands that.

“What can you tell me, then? Have you ever used magic in front of me?”

Merlin snickers. “Loads of times. You’re not very observant, my lord.”

“Really?” Arthur says, eyes narrowing. “Name one time.”

“How about the day we met?”

“I tried to take your head off with a mace.”

“And I stopped you, using magic.”

“You cheated?” Arthur yelps, outrage overwhelming his determination to keep his cool.

“I thought you were going to kill me,” Merlin says defensively.

 _Should have done_ , Arthur thinks, but he doesn’t say it out loud because it’s not even close to true. It’s his father’s prejudice’s rising up inside him, and this cramped space is only big enough for the two of them — Arthur and Merlin, like it’s always been.

Arthur says, “I should have known there was foul play happening. I would never be that clumsy naturally.” His eyebrows shoot up, another thought occurring. “Hang on. Did you have anything to do with all those incompetent bandits I’ve fought?”

Merlin nods hesitantly, amusement flickering across his face.

“You made them trip or drop their swords,” Arthur says, realizing. “It wasn’t luck, it was...” He trails off, staring at Merlin as a truly uncountable number of incidents rearrange themselves in his head.

“It was a lot of tree branches,” Merlin says, “mostly while you were mocking me for lying around being a coward.”

“Ah,” says Arthur. He frowns.

Merlin scrubs at his dirt-smeared face with an equally filthy jacket sleeve, then looks at Arthur expectantly.

For his part, Arthur is struggling with the irrational impulse to do something truly insane, like apologize. But Merlin knows, doesn’t he? That Arthur doesn’t really think he’s a coward, that the teasing and the horseplay and the endless inane tasks are some fumbling attempt of Arthur’s to communicate affection?

He’s starting to suspect that the devotion he’s seen from Merlin, the handful of moments when Merlin has offered wisdom, or confronted danger at Arthur’s side — or done the unthinkable and risked his own life to save Arthur’s — is only the tip of the iceberg, barely scratching the surface. Because if that’s what Merlin has done where Arthur could see him, what else has he done where he was safe to cast magic openly?

That glowing gold had seemed so alien when it first shone from Merlin’s eyes, eliciting nothing in Arthur but reflexive fear and the crackling electric shock of betrayal. He will admit now — to himself if not out loud — that there is mild curiosity stirring below his still-simmering rage.

Arthur clears his parched throat, a dry rasping noise. He asks, “Just how powerful are you, exactly?”

Merlin’s gaze drops from his. Arthur resists the impulse to reach across and tilt Merlin’s chin up, to stare him full in the face. If Merlin lies to him again, he doesn’t know if he can bear it.

“I don’t know,” Merlin says, and the rueful lilt to his voice marks it as the truth. “There’s a lot about my magic that I don’t understand.” He sounds cautious and tender around the words _my magic,_ the unfamiliarity of speaking them in front of Arthur painfully obvious.

Arthur makes a frustrated noise. “Now you sound like a proper sorcerer,” he says. “That dark-haired woman who tried to kill me when I retrieved the mortaeus flower — she loved speaking in riddles too.”

“Nimueh,” Merlin says, almost too quietly to hear.

Arthur tenses, that falling sensation returning. Like he’s mis-stepped and his foot has slipped off the edge of a cliff, a bottomless ravine yawning beneath him. Not unlike the caves where the flower grew, come to think of it. Every time he feels like he’s got his balance again, like he’s starting to understand this new dimension of Merlin — he is faced with the sudden obliterating fear that he’s got it wrong, that the Merlin he knew was a complete fiction.

“You know her?” Arthur asks slowly.

“We met once or twice,” Merlin says tightly. “She didn’t like me very much.”

“Popular as ever, I see,” Arthur drawls. But he doesn’t allow himself to slip into teasing, despite the skin-crawling desire to lighten the moment, to return to a more comfortable dynamic. This is important. “What exactly did you do to offend her, besides the obvious?”

“I might have, um, struck her with lightning,” Merlin says.

It’s a good thing Arthur’s already basically lying down, because that would have knocked him off his feet. “You did _what_?”

“She’d already thrown a fireball at me,” Merlin says indignantly. “And I was very worried about you, gods only know why, and she was trying to stop me from helping you.” And then, in a low voice that punches through Arthur with the force of a spear, he adds, “You were going to die.”

Unfortunately that does not actually narrow down the timing of the particular incident, but Arthur supposes they’ll have time to review that later, if they don’t suffocate down here. It does answer Arthur’s original question, in a roundabout sort of way, because he remembers telling his father about the sorceress — Nimueh — upon his return. He remembers the naked fear that glistened in Uther’s eyes for a second before his usual imperious façade returned to mask it. Whoever Nimueh is, she is powerful. Although, actually—

“Merlin,” Arthur says, suspecting he might already know the answer but needing to hear it from Merlin’s lips, “what happened to Nimueh? She hasn’t been seen in Camelot in years.”

Silence. Merlin’s teeth are clenched and he’s knotted his own fingers together until his hands turn white, his whole body drawn tight as a bowstring with an emotion Arthur cannot name. But there too is that irrepressible bravery: Merlin stares Arthur straight in the face this time despite the tears in his eyes, and says: “I killed her.”

“With your magic,” Arthur says heavily.

“It’s the only weapon I have,” Merlin says, jaw set with determination. “And that’s how it works, Arthur. A life for a life. You know that.” But then Merlin’s face twists and his mouth snaps shut, as if realizing he’s said something he shouldn’t have.

Arthur cocks his head. “Funny that. Morgause told me the same thing. Before she showed me my mother.” His heart is racing again, pounding in his ears till he can hardly hear himself say, “You told me it was an illusion. That it wasn’t true, what she’d said.”

Merlin presses the heels of his hands to his eyes. “Arthur,” he says again, but this time it sounds like a whisper, a plea. Almost a warning.

Arthur isn’t done with that subject, not even a little, but there are a dizzying number of directions he could go with his questions. Dozens of threads he could pull at, until Merlin comes apart. He can see the way Merlin is already fraying at the edges, trembling with exhaustion and fear. There is a dark, petty side of Arthur that wants to do it, to lash out until every messy secret is exposed in front of him. But there’s also a part of him that aches the way Merlin aches, that shares the pain weighing down Merlin’s shoulders and coloring his voice.

When the walls of the castle crumbled, something else was broken between them. Arthur doesn’t know if it’s possible to repair it, or even if they should.

* * *

“Hang on a second. Are you saying that when you confessed to being a sorcerer and healing Gwen’s father in front of the whole court, you were _telling the truth_?”

“I couldn’t let anyone else die for something that I did.”

“Merlin, you really are stupider than I thought you were.”

“And you’re exactly as much of an ass as I thought you were.”

“That’s treason, speaking to the prince like that.”

“I think that there are a few other things I’ve done that count higher on the list.”

Silence.

* * *

The air is beginning to taste stale, and a dull, pounding ache has started up behind Arthur’s eyes. His thirst is constant by now, and maddening. He stares hazily up at the ceiling, sprawled across the rocks flat on his back. There was a reason he’d clung to his side of the cave earlier, a reason he’d avoided Merlin and let this monstrous quiet grow between them.

Arthur squints at the brilliant white star at the top of the cavern and tries to marshal his increasingly fuzzy thoughts. Tries to remember why sadness sits like a stone in his chest cavity, heavy as the cold metal of his ceremonial crown and dark as the night creeping in from the corners of this place.

“Arthur.” That’s Merlin, of course. No title, no honorific. Just his name, urgent this time. Concerned about something.

“Merlin,” Arthur says back, mimicking his tone.

Merlin’s angular face materializes in Arthur’s field of vision, dark hair sticking out in all directions and pale skin shadowed by dust and fatigue. His blue eyes are as fathomless as the ocean, familiar as breathing, yet for some strange reason Arthur imagines them for a moment to shine gold. A gleam like molten metal, there and gone again before Arthur can even blink.

“Arthur,” Merlin says again, jostling him. Actually grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him, which irritates Arthur to no end. He tries to shove Merlin off of him, but his arms feel heavier and clumsier than usual. 

“Go away,” Arthur says thickly.

It’s no more serious than when he grumbles at Merlin in the mornings, when Merlin shows up with irrepressible cheerfulness to drag him — sometimes literally — out of the warm cocoon of his princely bed. He’s used to Merlin ignoring him, because there are a few constants in Arthur’s life, and one of them is that Merlin never listens to him when propriety says he should. And that Merlin won’t ever, ever actually leave him.

Which is why he’s hurt and a little surprised when Merlin actually moves away from him now. Arthur feels his absence like a tangible tear in the fabric of reality around him, a cold void about the size and shape of a rail-thin manservant with ears too large for his head.

“Merlin,” Arthur says, and tries to sit up. His normal grace and strength fail him, and he slumps backward — but before he can crack his head on the rocky wall of the cave, there are steady hands supporting him, braced against his neck and shoulders. Arthur knows them nearly as well as he knows his own.

“I’m here,” Merlin says, voice quiet and rough. “I’m here, Arthur. As long as you need me, I’ll be here.” There is a muffled sound, like a hitched breath. And then, even more quietly, till Arthur thinks he might have imagined it: “Even if you don’t want me around.”

Arthur twists in Merlin’s arms, seeking Merlin’s face with his dimming vision. He reaches out blindly, finds the coarse fabric of Merlin’s jacket and grips it in his fist. It brings him security, the two of them clinging to each other like this, when his head hurts too much to think and the world is dissolving into smears of brightly colored paint.

“Didn’t mean it,” Arthur mumbles. 

“What’s that?” Merlin fingers skim across Arthur’s forehead, his touch cool and feather-light.

“I don’t want you to go,” Arthur manages to say, even though his tongue is thick and heavy in his parched mouth. “I want you... with me.”

“I want that too,” says Merlin, but the absolute girl sounds like he’s crying again. “Arthur, please don’t make me leave you.”

Arthur cannot, at this moment, think of a single reason why he would ever do such a thing. His eyes flutter shut again as he thinks, trying to remember why Merlin’s tone is so goddamn sad. _Gold_ , he thinks. _Gold and blue._

“I won’t,” he says, patting vaguely at the fabric-covered silhouette near him. “I wouldn’t.”

“And you’re not going to die here either,” Merlin says, fiercer now. “Not after all the trouble I’ve gone to keep you alive so far.”

That brushes against something in Arthur’s head, an idea so huge and shifting that it barely leaves him room to breathe. Something that’s tilted the world sideways and buried the both of them here in this rubble-strewn cave.

“Not going to die,” Arthur agrees with Merlin. “I still need to talk. To you.” About what, he can’t remember.

“Yeah. Yeah, all right. We can talk,” Merlin says, jostling Arthur a little as he shifts position. “We’ll talk, and you can ask all the questions you want, okay?”

“Very generous. Don’t you know I’m the prince? I’m the one who gives permission around here.”

Arthur is absolutely certain Merlin rolls his eyes, even if he can’t see it. “Typical,” Merlin mutters, then something about “smothering to death” and “that’s what he remembers.”

Arthur drifts, the world misty and silent around him, like he’s lying in a boat on a shimmering silver lake. He almost wants to let go, almost lets the boat carry him away, but someone is standing on the shore with a tenuous grip on a grief so powerful it could withstand the centuries. Someone is waiting for him there, not ready to let him go just yet. The person is speaking, shouting even, but all Arthur can hold onto is a single idea: a bittersweet ache in his chest, a bit battered at the edges but warm as sunlight and soft as silk.

The earth itself is shaking around him, rocks crumbling and grinding. He can feel the vibrations in his body, but none of the gravel touches him. Someone is kneeling above him, holding up a dome of golden light like a canopy, like a shield.

“...almost out of here, Arthur. Can you hear me? We’re...”

Fresh air on his face, as cold and melodic as a mountain spring. Firelight, orange and flickering, eclipsing the white starlight that has surrounded him. Multiple voices now, jumbled and overlapping.

“...still alive.... needs...”

“Someone get Gaius!”

“...couldn’t have... much longer...”

When Arthur loses himself to the darkness, his last thought is of the fingers tangled together with his own.

* * *

Arthur wakes up in his own bed. The squashy pillows and fine sheets are blissfully comfortable, and his headaches is nothing but a fading memory. He knows before he even opens his eyes who he will find in the chair beside him.

“Rise and shine,” says Merlin with a grin, even though the world outside Arthur’s window is gray-blue with dusk, or perhaps dawn.

Arthur groans, rolling over to bury his face in his pillow.

“I’m only kidding,” Merlin says conversationally. “Gaius would have my head if I so much as let you stand up.”

“And what exactly would _you_ be able to do to stop me?” Arthur mutters, voice muffled.

When only silence answers him, a few memories return like the relentless crash of ocean waves, one after another until Arthur feels dizzy and disoriented. He remembers what Merlin would be able to do, and what it would look like if he did, and how Arthur found out.

“Arthur,” Merlin says tentatively, and abruptly Arthur is tired of the hesitant note in Merlin’s voice, a fear that sounds so profoundly wrong coming from a person who — though Arthur would never admit it — often demonstrates more bravery than most of the knights of Camelot.

Arthur sits up in bed, shoving the pillow away, and glares at Merlin with narrowed eyes. “Whatever you were about to say,” he says, “don’t.”

Merlin’s mouth snaps closed, but of course only for a second. “Are you telling me to shut up, my lord?”

“Yes,” Arthur says, though he isn’t, not really. He just needs a moment — a moment to think. He presses the heels of his hands to his eyes, the darkness there reminding him of rock walls closing in and not enough air to breathe and golden eyes and a truth enormous enough to break him open.

“You have magic,” Arthur says, quiet and heavy.

“I was born with it.” 

Arthur looks up, heart pounding, and meets Merlin’s gaze. He comes to a decision. “I need some time,” he says. “To figure out what I’m going to do.”

Merlin shifts on the chair, fingers curling and shoulders tensing. “To...”

“I’m not going to tell my father,” Arthur says quickly. “And I’m not going to arrest you.”

It stings a bit, to know Merlin thinks so little of him, but he isn’t going to forget the raw terror he glimpsed in that underground cave any time soon. That kind of fear isn’t logical, and it only increases the more you care for a person. As Merlin does for him, he knows. And, he is coming to realize, as he does for Merlin.

“I’m sorry,” Merlin mumbles. Arthur isn’t sure which part of this whole mess he’s apologizing for.

“I just... need time,” Arthur repeats. Merlin must understand, mustn’t he? Arthur isn’t saying he hates Merlin, or wants him gone — because he doesn’t. He couldn’t. It’s just that Arthur had only begun to get his fingertips around the impossibility of his feelings for Merlin before this all happened, and now — now he’s lost his bearings again.

All Arthur knows is that Merlin lied to him, and has saved his life more times than he’s aware of. But that can change. It can all be different now.

“And Merlin?” he says.

Merlin looks at him. “Yes?”

“No more lies,” Arthur says firmly. “That ends here.”

Merlin doesn’t relax, not all the way, but he nods. The shadows and the light on his face are both part of his expression, a visage at once familiar and unfamiliar to Arthur. But it’s real, it’s true, and in this moment Arthur thinks he is seeing all of Merlin for the very first time.

The emotion unfurling inside him, slow and beautiful as a flower blooming, feels a lot like hope.

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos & comments are always appreciated, especially since this is the longest thing I've posted to Ao3 so far!


End file.
